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OneCity councillor says Toronto can’t wait for provincial transit tax

As a bold plan to expand the TTC network lurches towards city council next week, the commission’s vice-chair is warning that the city can’t wait on Metrolinx to dream up new revenue sources to build transit.

In an interview Thursday, TTC vice-chair Glenn de Baeremaeker cast doubt on whether the provincial transit authority can be trusted to bring forth a funding strategy to expand the system.

Along with TTC chair Karen Stintz, Councillor de Baeremaeker is currently pushing a 30-year transit plan dubbed OneCity, which will go to council next week.

It includes a proposal to create a dedicated transit fund by collecting tax on positive property value adjustments. But that funding proposal overlaps with a major report on regional transit funding options that could include road tolls and regional taxes, which Metrolinx is obligated by an act of provincial parliament to produce before June 1, 2013.

When asked if he doubted whether that report would lead to a workable funding formula, de Baeremaeker told NOW, “Who says that there’s going to be a plan out next year? Who says that? Metrolinx? […] Who are they?”

“I don’t even know who Metrolinx is,” he continued. “And I bet you 99 per cent of the people in Toronto don’t know who Metrolinx is.”

De Baeremaeker went on to make the case for why Toronto council needs to come up with its own transit funding tool now rather than wait for reports from other bodies that may never bear fruit.

“I don’t want councillors today to say, oh, the tooth fairy and Metrolinx will show up on the same day and give us billions of dollars to build more transit,” he said.

He also said he sees the OneCity council process as complimentary to any discussions at the provincial level.

The TTC and Metrolinx have often been at odds since the provincial agency was created in 2006 to oversee transit projects across the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area. OneCity continues that trend, and has been criticized for seeking changes to several Metrolinx projects that are already underway.

Those projects include the Air Rail Link, as well as the Scarborough RT replacement, which Metrolinx is building as an LRT but which de Baeremaeker and Stintz insist should be a subway.

Because Stintz and de Baeremaeker are seeking $10 billion in new provincial funding for OneCity, the plan would need Metrolinx’s endorsement to go ahead.

Hours after de Baeremeaker was championing a Toronto transit tax Thursday however, rumours were swirling that the funding element of OneCity will be dropped before it gets to council’s July 11 meeting.

On Thursday afternoon councillors Josh Colle and Joe Mihevc, who helped craft the plan, both said that they would ask council to approve a study on the transit tax as part of the OneCity package.

But it was reported Friday that Stintz and de Baeremaeker had met with the mayor’s staff and were considering taking the revenue tool off the table. Rob Ford and his allies are strongly against a transit tax, and the TTC leaders need to rally as many votes as possible as many of Stintz’s former allies on the transit file distance themselves from OneCity.

A previously requested report on funding models for transit is expected from the city’s chief financial officer in October. Separating OneCity’s proposed network from the transit tax would allow council to vote next week for a study on the plan’s 21 transit lines – which has broader support – while deferring the controversial issue of how to pay for them until the fall.

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